Monday, August 22, 2011

I haven't done a great job of blogging this month.

My kids are finally fed up with each other. Not every second of every day mind you, but when it starts to go down hill, it does so in a nano-second. Hitting, pushing, pinching, name calling, tattle-tailing and crying have all reared it's ugly head. And do you know what goes hand in hand with that? Yelly Mummy. And I have to tell you, Yelly Mummyis on edge these days. She's tired of the squabbles. She's tired of a couple of kids that wake up way too early, and go to bed way too late. She's tired of making breakfast, lunch and dinner for a couple of kids who turn their little noses up at so much stuff. She's tired of sounding like a broken record that constantly natters things like "pick those up, put that way, make your bed, put your laundry in the basket, turn off the light, FLUSH the toilet, turn off the TV, put away your video games, clean up the toys you were JUST playing with before you start something new." She's tired of negotiating EVERYTHING. She's tired of a particular little girl who does EVERYTHING the HARD WAY. She's tired of dragging kids out of the house because they 'don't wanna go'. She's even a teensy bit tired of being corrected by her 9 year old, who is indeed his Daddy's little boy...

Yelly Mummy has grounded her children from watching television, because we have finally [sadly, I might add] said good-bye to Treehouse. We have gone from Miffy and Friends to The Amazing Spiezs... We've gone from Dora the Explorer to Johnny Test... We've gone from Wonder Pets to Phineas and Ferb [whom I'm pretty sure I hate...] I was kind of okay with the move to the Teletoon channel... I don't love all the shows, but there are some oldies the kids love like: Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry, The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show, Looney Tunes. Mason loves Star Wars the Clone Wars. A lot of the other cartoons, I'm just not crazy about. The last month or so, the sass and back talk have flared up around here, and their Dad and I are not taking too kindly to it. After a Mum/Dad huddle trying to figure out 'why the change', we realized, perhaps it was the shows they were watching. Lightbulb, or A-Ha moment, if you will. Seriously, did my Mum worry about what I was watching? [Did you Mum?] Then again, the extent of our cartoons were Flintstones after school and a few Saturday morning shows, end of story.

Don't even get me started on the family channel. I am NOT READY in the slightest bit to have my daughter wanting to emulate any of the girls on those shows. [Madelyn has already asked for her next birthday to be a Justin Beaver party] And yes, I tried to correct her with the name, but she refuses to believe me. So Justin Beaver it is.

I get that these shows are supposed to be funny. I also know they're directed towards kids, not adults. But they make adults/parents out to be complete morons... I mean, don't get me wrong, I watched The Facts of Life.

Every one, sing with me now....

You take the good,
You take the bad,
You take them both and there you have the facts of life.
The facts of life...

I watched and Different Strokes.

I'm pretty sure I walked around the house saying things like "Whatchyou talk'in 'bout Willis?" thinking I was H I L A R I O U S. Both these shows starting airing late in the 70's, Different Strokes ran from '78 - '86 and the Facts of Life from '79 - '88. So, suffice to say, I shouldn't have a problem letting my NINE year old watch a show, not of the cartoon variety, when I started watching these when I was 8-9. [Oops, I just gave my age away ;-0]

But I just don't like the shows today... Is it okay to say that? I mean when we watched those shows mentioned, it was a family affair. We ALL watched the shows. Back then we had ONE television in the house. One. Not a telly in every room. Not a telly on every floor. ONE telly, for the entire family. So of course my Mum and Dad watched with us. It was a Friday night thing. And lucky them, they were able to censor exactly what we were watching, and I didn't even realize that's what they were doing. Now, there are so many shows to choose from and the kids think that just because it's called the Family Channel, I should be okay with them watching whatever they want to. "But Mummy, we're only watching the Family Channel" The fact that they're both still calling me Mummy should say it all. [Or if the truth be told, they still call me Mummy because I told them they had to until they were at least 15...] They don't know any different, yet...

I would like to get rid of the TV entirely, well maybe that's a bit extreme. I would like the kids to not want to watch so much TV. I need to have more control. I'm thinking I'd better look up the information on blocking channels. Now is a good time to do that, I'm already Yelly Mummy, so Wicked Witch Mummy isn't such a stretch from there really. I would like them not to watch so much TV, but at the same time, sometimes the quiet it affordsme is blissful. Such a contradiction.

I guess what I'm getting around to, is this Yelly Mummy, who adores summer vacation. Who loves to have no schedule. Who sleeps in and wakes up with a smile most mornings... This Mummy is looking forward to school starting next week. It's taken 8 weeks to get to this point . I wonder if that's why summer vacation is in around the 8 - 9 week mark... I'm pretty sure that 2 weeks from now, we'll all have cooled off a bit, and look forward to spending time together again. [Maybe without so much TV]